1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, and more particularly to a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device capable of suppressing surface roughness of a substrate made of silicon carbide during activation annealing for activating an impurity introduced into the substrate.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, silicon carbide has been increasingly used as a material for a semiconductor device in order to realize a higher breakdown voltage, loss reduction, use in a high-temperature environment and the like of the semiconductor device. Silicon carbide is a wide band gap semiconductor having a wider band gap than that of silicon which has been conventionally and widely used as a material for a semiconductor device. By using silicon carbide as a material for a semiconductor device, therefore, a higher breakdown voltage, on-resistance reduction and the like of the semiconductor device can be achieved. A semiconductor device made of silicon carbide also has the advantage of exhibiting less performance degradation when used in a high-temperature environment than a semiconductor device made of silicon.
In a method of manufacturing such semiconductor device made of silicon carbide, a desired impurity is introduced into a substrate made of silicon carbide, and then activation annealing for activating the impurity is carried out. Here, the activation annealing of the substrate made of silicon carbide needs to be carried out at a high temperature. As a result, surface roughness of the substrate may occur due to the activation annealing. It is desirable to reduce this surface roughness since it may adversely affect the performance of the manufactured semiconductor device.
To address this problem, a method of manufacturing a silicon carbide semiconductor device has been proposed, in which a surface of a region into which ion implantation was performed is covered with a silicon nitride film prior to activation annealing of an impurity introduced by the ion implantation (e.g., see Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 7-86199 (Patent Literature 1)).
During the above activation annealing, however, the substrate needs to be heated to a high temperature of 1600° C. or more. In the method of manufacturing a semiconductor device described in Patent Literature 1, therefore, a crack may occur in the silicon nitride film due to the difference in coefficient of linear expansion between silicon carbide and silicon nitride and the like. If a crack occurs in the silicon nitride film serving as a protective film, surface roughness of the substrate cannot be sufficiently suppressed.